“He’s my only friend who didn’t need a larger hat size.” That’s what Duke Ellington said about Tony Bennett, who never got a big head by letting fame change his values. They were such good friends that the talented Bennett painted a portrait of Ellington that once hung in the National Portrait Gallery (image below).
Fighting racism was among the great singer’s many values. He may have fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Kaufering Concentration Camp in the Second World War, but Bennett was demoted in the Army when he attended church and dined with a Black soldier. When a senior officer found out about it, he tore Corporal Bennett’s stripes right off his uniform and spat on them - in front of everyone. You would have thought that beating an evil regime whose existence was based in part on racism and cruelty might have taught us a few things back then. No such luck, then or now.
According to Insider.com, Bennett wrote in his autobiography “The Good Life” (1998), “Black Americans have fought in all of America's wars, yet they have seldom been given credit for their contribution, and segregation and discrimination in civilian life and in the armed forces has been a sad fact of life.”
After the War, Bennett grew increasingly enraged with the treatment Ellington, Nat King Cole, and other Black performers received on the road at concert venues, hotels, and restaurants. This flamed his already red-hot civil rights fires, ultimately finding him marching for voting rights with Dr. King in Selma in 1965. The civil rights activist who later drove Bennett to the airport was assassinated the next day by the KKK.
Bennett was not just a gifted singer, artist, and global ambassador, he was steadfastly anti-racist throughout his life - a beautiful human being. Happily, this must boil the blood of the vile racist creatures who like his music while they still slither among us.
